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| Sensory details in a work; the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, call to mind an idea, or describe an object. Imagery involves any or all of the five senses. |
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| Conclusion or type of reasoning whereby observation or information about a part of a class is applied to the class as a whole. Contrast with deductive. |
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| The process of arriving at a conclusion from a hint, implication, or suggestion. |
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| The use of angry and insulting language in satirical writing. |
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| Refers to opening a story in the middle of the action, requiring filling in the past details by exposition of flashback. |
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| Irony; verbal, dramatic, and situational |
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| A situtation or statement characterized by significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant. Irony is frequently humorous, and can be sarcastic when using words to imply he opposite of what they normally mean. |
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| Parallel structure in which the parallel elements are similar not only in grammatical structure, but also in length. For example, "An envious heart makes a treacherous ear" (Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston). |
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| Placing of two items side by side to create a certain effect, reveal an attitude, or accomplish some other purpose. |
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| The strict meaning of a word or words: not figurative or exaggerated. |
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| Form of understatement in which the negative of the contrary is used to achieve emphasis and intensity. For example, "She is not a bad cook." |
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| The implicit comparison or identification of one thing with another unlike itself without the use of a verbal signal such as "like" or "as." One thing is pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them. |
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| A figure of speech that uses the name of one thing to name or designate something, as in, "The White House announced today..." |
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| The feeling of ambience resulting from the tone of a piece as well as the writer/narrator's attitude and point of view. The effect is created through descriptions of feelings or objects that establish a particular feeling such as gloom, fear, or hope. |
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| Recurrent device, formula, or situation that often serves as a signal for the appearance of a character or event. |
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| A form of writing that tells a story. |
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| Use of techniques such as flashbacks and/or digression in the telling of a story. |
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| The "character" who "tells" the story. |
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| Desire to return in thought or fact to a former time. |
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| A work capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes, such as "buzz" or "hiss." |
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| The first part or beginning of a piece of writing. |
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| Exaggerated language; see also, hyperbole. |
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| A figure of speech that combines two apparently contradictory elements, as in "jumbo shrimp" or "deafening silence." |
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| A statement that seems contradictory, but is actually true. |
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| Recurrent syntactical similarity where serveral parts of a sentence or several sentences are expressed alike to show that the ideas in the parts or sentences equal in importance. It also adds balance, rhythm, and clarity to the sentence. For example, "I have always searched for, but never found the perfect painting for that wall." |
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| A satirical imitation of a work of art for purpose of ridiculing its style or subject. |
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| The voice or figure of the author who tells and structures the story and who may or may not share of the values of the actual author. |
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| Treating an abstraction or nonhuman object as if it were a person by giving it human qualities. |
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| A character's view of the situation or events in the story. |
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| The view the reader gets of the action and characters in a story. |
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| Information or rumor deliberately spread to help or harm a person, group, or institution. |
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| The ordinary of form of written language without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse. |
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| The chief character in a work of literature. |
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| The literary practice of attempting to describe life and nature without idealization and with attention to detail. |
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| A piece of writing that gives considered thought to something. |
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| Repeating or repeated action. |
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| Looking back on things past. |
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| The language of a work and its style. |
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| Particular use of word patterns and styles used to clarify, make associations, and focus the writing in a piece of literature. Some rhetorical devices are expletives, parallelism, metaphor, analogy, assonance, etc. |
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| A sharp caustic remark. A form of verbal irony in which apparent praise is actually bitterly or harshly critical. For example, a coach is saying to a player who misses the ball, "Nice catch." |
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| A literary style used to make fun of or ridicule an idea or human vice or weakness. |
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| The time and place of the action in a story, poem, or play. |
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| A direct comparison of one thing to another, usually using the words "like" or "as" to draw the connection. |
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| The person--not necessarily the author--who is the voice of the poem or story. |
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| A form of deduction. An extremely subtle, sophisticated, or deceptive argument. |
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| A person, place, thing, event, or pattern in a literary work that designates itself and at the same time figuratively represents something else. The use of one object to suggest another hidden, object or idea. |
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| A figure of speech in which a part signifies the whole, such as "head of cattle" or "hands on deck." |
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| The way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. It is sentence structure and how it influences the way a reader perceives a piece of writing. |
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| The central or dominant idea or concern of a work; the main idea or meaning. |
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| Focus statement of an essay; premise statement upon which the point of view or discussion in the essay is based. |
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| The attitude a literary work takes towards its subject and theme. It reflects the narrator's attitude. |
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| Words and devices that bring unity and coherence to a piece of writing. Examples: however, in addition, and on the other hand. |
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| The use of a word in a figurative sense with a decided change or extension in its literal meaning. |
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| Deliberate expression of an idea or event as less important that it actually is or was. |
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| An imaginary place of ideal perfection. The opposite of a dystopia. |
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| The acknowledged or unacknowledged source of words of the story; the speaker, a "person" telling the story or poem. |
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| Quickness of intellect and talent for saying brilliant things that surprise and delight by their unexpectedness. |
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| Grammatically correct linkage of one subject with two or more verbs or a verb with two or more direct objects. The linking shows a relationship between ideas more clearly. For example: Bob exceeded at sports; Kim at academics; Mark at eating. |
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